sofa
by ellonen
Summary: As Naruto struggles with his own humanity, Sakura comes to be the only one he can rely on. On a simple sofa, they embrace each other as the world collapses around them. Completed on the 5th of June, 05.
1. sofa 01

sofa 01

i.

There is a knock on the door when Sakura is washing the dishes – she winces, and hopes it's somebody who won't stay long. She's tired and would like to go to sleep already, not chit-chat with someoneat the door after eleven o'clock in the evening, but still she goes to open that door (of course, it's become her obligation).

She reaches for the doorknob, wet hand touching the cool metal, and briefly goes over the option of not opening it: she could go to sleep and be forever left in the itching feeling of not knowing who wanted to see her that late in the night. She could also wallow in that damned curiosity of hers which always in the end takes the best of her.

The door opens with a soft click, like a hammer touching a nail too lightly, and reveals a half-dead, blood-clad Naruto on the other side.

A ghost of an expletive moistensSakura's lips as he falls on her, forgetting that it's him who's the stronger of them. A breathed hiss disappears into the cold night air creeping inside from the dark evening as Sakura hauls him onto her couch, forgetting to care about the mess he'll make if she doesn't remove his clothes. Not that it would help, she says to herself; he's covered in blood inside out upside down – even in his eyes.

Which, she knows, are not blood-red, but scarlet and for (if not entirely) different reasons than oozing wounds and a battle-filled mind.

ii.

It's warm, warm like in a womb (he imagines, of course he has no memories), like lukewarm rainwater pouring down from a sheet of clouds in a summer day. He's sore and aching from every single place in his body, and a few more, but the warmth that catches him lets him linger for a while and not think about anything but nice things.

The warmth disappears all too quickly and he suddenly sees a sofa in front of him, and that takes him off guard – there are no sofas in his apartment. It's beige and fits bizarrely well to the floor, which, Naruto realizes, is altogether too close to him than it ought to if he had just woken up. His head pounds – one, two , three, he loses count – and he's sure there's some sort of event meant for horses in there because it fucking _hurts_.

A feeling in his gut (which has been repaired by Sakura) tells him everything's not alright and he tells it to shut up, I know already.

There's a familiar smell lingering in the air, soap and food and a faint shred of anticeptics and Naruto tries to place them somewhere, failing miserably in front of the massive headache. Rolling onto his back, his side hits the table and he stares at the unfamiliar white ceiling, realizing that he can't move nearly at all. He can still feel, though, and he thinks this is a good sign because at least his spinal cord hasn't been broken.

Spinal cords break in battles.

Battles...

Naruto turns on his side again and retches.

iii.

"You could have kept it in."

"You didn't have to give me an overdose of painkillers."

"It wasn't an overdose, it was barely the necessary amount."

Naruto snorts and winces a second after when Sakura starts removing the bandages from his torso. Keeping angry remarks inside he reminds himself that she knows (she better know) what she's doing and bites his lip, which already tastes like copper.

Sakura's face is grey and white in the early morning light, shadows of worry and exhaustion more visible on her features than the shadows in the corners of her house. Worry for Naruto's condition (mental, the physical is already under her control), exhaustion from a night spent awake trying to listen to even the smallest sound from the first floor.

She doesn't ask.

It's not like he wouldn't tell her if he wanted to.

So she settles for slapping his arm gently, finishing the bandaging and adding sleeping pills to his food when he isn't looking.


	2. sofa 02

sofa 02

iv.

When Naruto asks her why she isn't leaving her house, she answers that she can't leave the house in his hands without having an eye on him. When Naruto looks at her dubiously and remarks that he always keeps his own apartment clean, she lets out a clipped, sparkly laugh and says, of course, and then you come to my place and mess it up for the both of us.

Naruto smiles his crooked smile that doesn't yet reach his eyes and says nothing more.

v.

One evening, two days after he knocked on Sakura's door and lost consciousness, Naruto is making dinner. Sakura hasn't said anything about where she is but he can just as easily guess that she is either shopping with Ino or on a short mission (both equally challenging in his mind, but hey, girls are girls). She will be back by nightfall and he wants to do something for her, or maybe just keep the ghosts in the corners for a while.

The sound of keys rattles from outside and Naruto slips the flavoring in his hand into the soup, accidentally making it thrice spicier than is necessary.

Sakura emerges from the door and looks tired, weary and old – and Naruto feels like a wife greeting her husband after a day's work.

"I'm home," she sighs to no one in particular and drops her jacket on the couch. There is blood on her clothes but of course she's no longer wounded because she's a medical ninja. She mutters something about going to take a bath and doesn't even see the food he has prepared (but that's okay, he can keep it warm for another hour or so).

As the distant sound of water falling fills Naruto's ears in the empty room, his thoughts linger perhaps slightly too long on the person upstairs.

As Sakura walks down the stairs that creak gently under her feet, she yawns and towels her hair viciously. She finally notices that he's made dinner and a grey light dances in her eyes as she draws in a lungful of the scent – pleased, if not entirely happy.

They sit down at the nothing-very-fancy table Naruto's set and she feels pampered, treated like a princess in the midst of a war. She takes a spoonful of the soup and for a second Naruto almost thinks she's going to die – that red her face turns. She manages to swallow the soup (with some chakra trick, Naruto suspects) and even smile a little waveringly.

"That's some spicy soup you have there."

Naruto smiles and takes some to himself. Used to his own crappy cooking skills, he eats it without troubles.

"Yeah, I know," he says, and smiles to something between his plate and Sakura's face.


	3. sofa 03

sofa 03

vi.

Late the same night, Sakura and Naruto are sitting on her sofa, the beige one Naruto has partly destroyed before (covered with a yellow blanket as of now). Naruto is surfing through the TV channels and Sakura is reading, eyes absently flickering to the screen every now and then. Naruto finally decides then that there's nothing interesting enough for him to follow and turns off the TV, settling for just sitting instead.

Just sitting, yeah right.

His foot hits the parquet, his fingers drum a bizarre melody on his lap, he shifts, swings, tosses and turns until Sakura's ready to snap a few not-so-well thought thoughts to him. But when it stops just as suddenly as it has begun, she thanks herself for being patient.

Knowing Naruto, she knows that he is going to say something because there's no way he'd succumb to sitting quietly in one place unless he indeed _is_ about to say something. Her eyes stare at the book, skipping lines and words, and she doesn't dare to take the initiative in fear of scaring him. _Scaring him, yeah right, Sakura… The future Hokage, how could you scare him_ --

But as the first words he's spoken from his heart in a long time drop from his lips, Sakura knows she's the one who could crush his entire world.

vii.

"Naruto, why didn't you tell earlier?"

Sakura's thumb brushes his cheek, his jawline, his hair, and she can _feel_ the anxiety and fear in him.

"You didn't ask." Alright, that's the one she can blame on herself.

"Why doesn't anybody else know?"

"I didn't tell them. And I'm the only one who knows." And that's the one she could blame on him if she had the heart to.

She pulls him into her arms, his stiff back a horrible mark of his emotional scars (and lack thereof). Silent tears run down her cheeks on his back as she feels him melting into her embrace, clutching at her back, mouth opened in a silent scream he has been holding in ever since Hinata's and Kiba's death.


	4. sofa 04

sofa 04

viii.

Sakura stands in the front row at Hinata and Kiba's funeral.

They are buried like heroes. They have died on a mission in the country of Fire, fighting for their own village and home. Burned to death, even ANBU's special squad hasn't been able to find a fraction of their bodies left.

The ceremony is nothing to talk about. The weather's submitted to the village's wishes and the clouds hang low and heavy on the sky, draping their arms to comfort the mourners. The last leafs of the trees fly among the black-clothed young assassins, whispering their goodbyes and disappearing to give way to the winter.

The Hokage says a few words about honor, friendship, trust and love (none of which Sakura really pays attention to) and with a hand on her eyes, she makes her own sorrow wane into her title and goes to give the relatives a brief, formal _I'm sorry_.

In this grey morning, when the clouds hang low and the wind is humid, Sakura's eyes feel strangely dry as she strokes Ino's golden hair, feeling that it is the sunlight under those stones Hinata's and Kiba's bodies should be buried underneath.

end


End file.
